Sadness in my Heart and Jewel's Hands

I was following up on my assignment of James W. Pennebaker and decided to do more research on him.

He had found that during September 11 attacks after the planes had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, bloggers had expressed an "elevated rate of negative moods in the days after 9/11 - were generally quite healthy. They were psychologically distancing themselves from the emotional turmoil of the event."

So, I thought I would look up in YouTube for some videos of the traumatic event and found a couple of them. The first one, was posted by Brian Bezalel showing George Bush and the numerous images of the event with Jewel's song Hands. I felt that the song was most appropriate, sounded so soulful....

Second one here, was a about a lady named Melissa Doi. She was trapped at the 83rd floor of one of the towers, and I could really feel her despair and desperation while the policewoman handling the call was trying to calm her down. At some point, she had raised her voice which I could fully understand... and then suddenly I felt very sad in my heart... cannot really explain it but just like a sense of emptiness as I hear her pleas for help.

Third one here. After listening to Jewel's Hands in the first video, I was curious... I decide to look for her MTV video and there I found her singing... and again the scenes were of terrible devastation. The initial scenes were again of people suffering and crying, but at the end there were signs of hope and courage.... see the video and you will know what I mean.

Final one here. I decided to find Jewel's lyrics on video and finally understood the message she was saying.

In life, we will face ups and downs. In the end we can overcome whatever obstacles we encounter if we maintain our faith....

I do not know whether after blogging this here, would I feel better and meaningful. But definitely doing this assignment really had made me feel sadness but also hope that we can triumph in the face of adversity and troubles.

Expressive Writing, Traumas and Health

I just finished reading one tough article titled: Expressive Writing, Emotional Upheavals, and Health by James W. Pennebaker and Cindy K. Chung.

Wow... incredible... I did not understand the material at all during my first reading... totally lost. Was supposed to do a presentation on this as part of my Knowledge Assets course requirements. This paper is published in a Health Psychology journal, but my group was asked to do this... strange ah? But I think the main crux of this paper maybe linked to the course after all. We, humans are also Knowledge Assets, so understanding ourselves could definitely be beneficial.

Anyway, back to the paper. In a nutshell, the paper suggests that writing expressively has certain health benefits.

Some of my notes indicate:

1) Writing forces people to stop and reevaluate their life circumstances.
2) Talking and Writing about emotional experiences are superior to writing about superficial topics.
3) Disclosure of writing of emotional events has broad benefits.
4) Timing of writing is important. Too early may have negative consequences. Sometimes, denial, detachment and distraction is healthy. However, prolonged thinking of the trauma in the following weeks and months would require expressive writing intervention and benefits will occur.

Interesting paper.... this means blogging about your feelings can actually help attain better health.